| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Website for Translation- help needed Thread poster: Luke Mersh
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Luke Mersh 
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:37
Spanish to English
Dear friends.
I already have a personal website , but am looking to expand.
I was wondering if anybody can give me advise on the follow:
what is better for a professional translation website?
Blog
wordpress
CMS
weebly
Other
I would really like peoples input and there thoughts on which one works best.
many thanks
| | | | | Time and money | Jul 3, 2015 |
Are two important factors in making a decision, I would say.
How much time could you invest in blogging?
Would it be work-related? Or fun/more personal?
Do you have time to invest in creating a WordPress website?
What benefit do you hope to get from WordPress that you cannot currently generate with your present website?
I created my website using the Wix website, which I really enjoyed doing and purchased my domain and hosting through them.... See more Are two important factors in making a decision, I would say.
How much time could you invest in blogging?
Would it be work-related? Or fun/more personal?
Do you have time to invest in creating a WordPress website?
What benefit do you hope to get from WordPress that you cannot currently generate with your present website?
I created my website using the Wix website, which I really enjoyed doing and purchased my domain and hosting through them.
I considered WordPress but did not have sufficient time to invest in learning how to create the site.
In doing my research, one issue that I felt was important is help when faced with a problem. WordPress is open source which means no one particular body controls the additional features it offers. So, if a problem occurs with a particular feature you may use, you will have either a number of other users waiting to help or may have to wait for the developer to get back to you and he may have moved on.
Wix have their own developers and have answered every question I have asked.
One potential downside is I couldn't buy a .de domain through them but can do that separately and join it with my wix side. Plus, if I move from Wix I can't take my content with me as it is but will have to recreate it from fresh with somebody else. That is were CMS would be useful.
Or you could have a professional develop a site for you. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Natalie Soper
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:37
French to English
+ ...
I've only had experience using Wordpress, which is what I used to create my own website. I found it easy to use (I have no knowledge of website coding) with lots of options for themes and colour schemes. You can also make it so that it looks more like a website than a blog, which might be what you're looking for.
Hope that helps!
| | | | | Questions before answers | Jul 3, 2015 |
Before anyone can offer a meaningful response to your enquiry, we’d need to know:
- The intended purpose of the website:
- Simple on-line substitute for a traditional visiting card?
- A place to regularly share your knowledge and understanding of translation, and/or comment on developments in the profession?
- A complete virtual office from where you intend to run your entire business, with publicity/promition/general user intera
... See more Before anyone can offer a meaningful response to your enquiry, we’d need to know:
- The intended purpose of the website:
- Simple on-line substitute for a traditional visiting card?
- A place to regularly share your knowledge and understanding of translation, and/or comment on developments in the profession?
- A complete virtual office from where you intend to run your entire business, with publicity/promition/general user interaction available to all visitors and confidential business-oriented functionality (eg: billing, project management, file exchange, ...) under tight (and possibly tiered) access-control?
- Other?
- How many (and which) languages do you intend to use on the website when it first goes on-line?
- Do you plan/expect to expand to include other languages later?
- If the website is to be multi-lingual, who is going to do the translation/localization and how do you expect them to interact with the website (eg: directly (on-line), or via you or an IT specialist)?
- Do you want visitors to be able to provide feedback, submit enquiries (privately and/or publicly), or interact in other ways with your website?
- Do you plan to build this website yourself, and if so, what relevant IT skills do you have?
- If you plan to outsource the project, how many hundreds/thousands of USD/EUR are you prepared to pay?
- Finally, what does
Luke Mersh wrote:
(...) I am looking to expand.
mean?
RL ▲ Collapse
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Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:37
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| Wordpress is flexible | Jul 3, 2015 |
Natalie Soper wrote:
You can also make it so that it looks more like a website than a blog, which might be what you're looking for.
Luke, I agree with Natalie. My website is at this stage little more than a placeholder, but although it's hosted on Wordpress I was able to make it look - issues of content aside - like a conventional 'corporate' website. Wordpress also has thousands of plugins and good support. I'd go for Wordpress.
Regards
Dan
| | | | Luke Mersh
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:37
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER | nice website. | Jul 3, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote: Natalie Soper wrote:
You can also make it so that it looks more like a website than a blog, which might be what you're looking for. Luke, I agree with Natalie. My website is at this stage little more than a placeholder, but although it's hosted on Wordpress I was able to make it look - issues of content aside - like a conventional 'corporate' website. Wordpress also has thousands of plugins and good support. I'd go for Wordpress. Regards Dan
| | | | | Not a huge fan of Wordpress | Jul 3, 2015 |
I would recommend Weebly or Wix. They're both easy to use and you get a lot more flexibility out of them than you do with Wordpress. They're both CMS tools, so you can update your site as often as needed or wanted, and both have built-in blogging functions (which can be a great tool).
I made a few tutorials using Weebly and Wix specifically for building a website for a freelance trans... See more I would recommend Weebly or Wix. They're both easy to use and you get a lot more flexibility out of them than you do with Wordpress. They're both CMS tools, so you can update your site as often as needed or wanted, and both have built-in blogging functions (which can be a great tool).
I made a few tutorials using Weebly and Wix specifically for building a website for a freelance translator.
Here is the Wix one: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgAqFoQC3_lNjR8BtAo8uNRlqfgLmVbBD
(I still have a few more videos to upload here, but the basics are all there)
And the Weebly one: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgAqFoQC3_lNlaTze6pRmNCXeYPB6RInu ▲ Collapse
| | | | Luke Mersh
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:37
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
Hi Triston,
I did watch your videos, but the reason why I am asking is because I am not blogging but just creating a pro website for business.
regards
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Luke Mersh
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:37
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
Robin Levey wrote: Before anyone can offer a meaningful response to your enquiry, we’d need to know:
- The intended purpose of the website:
- Simple on-line substitute for a traditional visiting card?
- A place to regularly share your knowledge and understanding of translation, and/or comment on developments in the profession?
- A complete virtual office from where you intend to run your entire business, with publicity/promition/general user interaction available to all visitors and confidential business-oriented functionality (eg: billing, project management, file exchange, ...) under tight (and possibly tiered) access-control?
- Other?
- How many (and which) languages do you intend to use on the website when it first goes on-line?
- Do you plan/expect to expand to include other languages later?
- If the website is to be multi-lingual, who is going to do the translation/localization and how do you expect them to interact with the website (eg: directly (on-line), or via you or an IT specialist)?
- Do you want visitors to be able to provide feedback, submit enquiries (privately and/or publicly), or interact in other ways with your website?
- Do you plan to build this website yourself, and if so, what relevant IT skills do you have?
- If you plan to outsource the project, how many hundreds/thousands of USD/EUR are you prepared to pay?
- Finally, what does
Luke Mersh wrote:
(...) I am looking to expand.
mean? RL
Hi Robin.
My intentions are for it to be business purpose, so:
Where clients/ customers can submit query form for quotes.
with languages it would be Englis & Spanish( I would translate the site myself, at a later stage)
Yes I do plan to build it myself, I am a qualified website designer, but time is short, hence why I am looking at things like wordpress, etc.
I mean expanding, because at the mo I just have a simple website, but am looking to create another with a more professional feel.
regards
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Luke Mersh wrote: Hi Triston, I did watch your videos, but the reason why I am asking is because I am not blogging but just creating a pro website for business. regards
Gotcha
I would still recommend those platforms. I'm rebuilding my company site right now through Wix (no blog this time). They let you do some really neat things and since you already have experience as a web designer, you can do some really amazing things with them (especially Wix).
| | | | | Think ahead, think 'visitor experience', think 'manpower efficiency' | Jul 3, 2015 |
Luke Mersh wrote:
Hi Robin.
My intentions are for it to be business purpose, so:
Where clients/ customers can submit query form for quotes.
with languages it would be Englis & Spanish( I would translate the site myself, at a later stage)
Yes I do plan to build it myself, I am a qualified website designer, but time is short, hence why I am looking at things like wordpress, etc.
I mean expanding, because at the mo I just have a simple website, but am looking to create another with a more professional feel.
regards
Even with that limited additional information, it’s clear that you need to find (or build from scratch) a solution that provides proper multi-language options from the outset. If you begin with a simple mono-lingual website, you may find it almost impossible to transform it into an effective bi/multi-lingual site later. In the worst-case scenario, you could end up having to build, edit and update two complete independent websites in parallel, one is English and the other in Spanish. It is far more efficient – especially for you as the designer/editor - to have just one website 'framework' (web structure, page layout, graphics) which is instantly switchable to whichever language the visitor chooses. Such an approach also means that if you ever need to add an extra language, you only need to translate the textual context – not start cloning/adapting entire web-pages. All the websites I have built in the past 5 years are intrinsically multi-lingual – even if some of them (at present) are offered in only one language. The IT and manpower overhead is not enormous, but the time/cost saving if an extra language is needed later is very significant.
Also, when choosing a solution, you need to look not only at how you, as the website owner/editor/translator are going to interact with it, but also what your visitors will experience if they switch language during a visit to the site. Simple things like ensuring the site automatically displays the language viewed by the visitor last time (s)he visited are easy to do and very helpful. But many multi-lingual websites forget which page the visitor was viewing when the language was changed, throwing them back to the home page*. Well-designed multi-lingual sites take the visitor straight to the same page in the other language – and even remember what the visitor was writing if (s)he switched language while filling in an on-line form.
Some years ago when I began building multi-lingual sites I went through the same process you are engaging in now: looking for a solution that satisfied my requirements and those of my clients, which included: good visitor experience; (potentially) unlimited number of languages; strong data security for ‘virtual office’ websites; efficient use of manpower and IT resources; etc. I don’t know what Wordpress and suchlike packages offer today, but 5 or 6 years ago I found nothing suitable and decided to build everything from scratch using ASP.NET. I’ve never looked back.
RL
* Try it here on Proz.com – you can change to another language at the bottom of the page – and then compare the experience with my ‘virtual office’ website http://www.mediamatrix.cl'
| | | | | I use Wix too | Jul 4, 2015 |
I switched to Wix as well this year, and I'm quite satisfied overall. My biggest complaint is that I don't think (though I would try calling them before subscribing to confirm this/try to haggle with them) that they provide free business email services, and I wound up re-upping with my former web hosting service as well just to maintain my business email for another year. But then again, if you're a bit more web saavy than I, I bet you could find a way around this.
Also be sure that... See more I switched to Wix as well this year, and I'm quite satisfied overall. My biggest complaint is that I don't think (though I would try calling them before subscribing to confirm this/try to haggle with them) that they provide free business email services, and I wound up re-upping with my former web hosting service as well just to maintain my business email for another year. But then again, if you're a bit more web saavy than I, I bet you could find a way around this.
Also be sure that you check their billing terms, as I seem to remember paying more than I expected because of the need to pay for their domain hosting services.
With those caveats, my site looks MUCH better than it did on my old site, so I'll continue to use Wix for the foreseeable future. ▲ Collapse
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Luke Mersh
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:37
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
I am not going to purchase any paid services at this time, just looking for free services for the time being.
| | | | | Wix does have a free option | Jul 4, 2015 |
But it does come with advertising for the site on it.
They often do promotions which then makes it a more viable option.
Can't you update your present site? Or are you just looking for other marketing opportunities?
| | | | | Contradictions | Jul 4, 2015 |
This:
Luke Mersh wrote:
... what is better for a professional translation website?
this:
My intentions are for it to be business purpose, ... a more professional feel.
and this:
... creating a pro website for business
are, to all intents and purposes, incompatible with this:
Luke Mersh wrote:
I am not going to purchase any paid services at this time, just looking for free services for the time being.
If you aren't prepared to invest in your business, you must expect to sink to (or remain at) the bottom of the income ladder in this increasingly competitive business.
RL
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